


Hearts of Kyber, Feet of Sand

by VanaTuivana



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Backstory, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Violence, Healing, Imperial Occupation, Loss of Faith, M/M, Married Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, Married Sex, May the Force Be With You, Minor Character Death, Older Characters, Pre-Rogue One, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:08:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanaTuivana/pseuds/VanaTuivana
Summary: On the day the temple fell, a rainstorm raged over NiJedha...Baze Malbus loses his home, his purpose, and his faith when the Temple of the Kyber falls to the Imperial occupation of his homeworld.  All he has left is his partner and his rage, and he cannot,willnot lose either of them.





	Hearts of Kyber, Feet of Sand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



> This story takes bits of inspiration here and there from the _Rogue One_ novelization by Alexander Freed (the rain on Jedha, the sunset prayer) and from _Guardians of the Whills_ by Greg Rucka (some NiJedha geography and worldbuilding) but it's decidedly not canon to either of those lovely books, for the principal reason that both novels forgot to mention that Chirrut and Baze are an old married couple. I can only hope this oversight will be rectified in future editions. ;)

On the night before the temple fell, two of the last Guardians of the Whills sat side by side on the roof while NaJedha rose in the darkening sky. The dormitories were quiet this time of night, especially now that the numbers of Disciples and Guardians were dwindling, their brothers and sisters losing faith or choosing other paths in the face of the Empire’s occupation of this cold, holy moon.

The planet glowed in the reflected light of their star, luminous in shades of pink and orange as the shifting starlight caught and lingered in the swirling gases of the planet’s atmosphere, and Baze Malbus sighed without entirely meaning to.

“What are you looking at?” Chirrut Îmwe wanted to know. His milk-blue eyes were turned to the sky, as if he could see what Baze saw if he only concentrated hard enough.

Baze slung his arm around Chirrut. “NaJedha is rising in the west.”

“Tell me,” Chirrut commanded.

“Hmm.” Baze considered for a moment, one finger absently trailing over Chirrut’s shoulder, back and forth, back and forth. “When we were seventeen or so, and we sneaked out early one morning to see the pinna birds flock because you couldn’t sleep while they were calling your name, the way the dawn light hit the sands and glowed. Remember that?”

Chirrut chuckled, his face lighting up bright as the planet above. “Pink and gold, I remember. That _was_ beautiful. We stayed out the whole morning chasing those pinna birds.”

Baze squeezed him tighter. “Not _just_ chasing birds.” Chirrut hummed in agreement, low and amused, but he didn’t move in the circle of Baze’s arm.

Together they were still and silent. Night grew around them, deep and dark, as the wan light from NaJedha’s old sun faded away and the permanent chill rose up from the ground to embrace them. Baze tipped his head back and looked and felt and listened. In the dancing light of NaJedha above him, in the frozen solidity of the moon’s surface below, in the muted night sounds of the temple around him, in the steady warmth of his partner at his side: in all this he felt the movement of the Force of Others. 

He wasn’t good with expressing anything like this in words, and he never had been; pretty expressions came slowly and clumsily to his tongue at the best of times, which had frustrated his mother’s plans for a political career for him and set him on the winding path that had led him to the temple. Even in his vows as a Guardian when he passed the ninth duan, even in his vows of marriage not long after, he’d used phrases written by others, mantras he could repeat with strength and conviction. _I am one with the Force; we are one in the Force._ Tonight, though, he felt he could almost have put his own words to the feeling of completeness, of this unifying peace in an unpeaceful galaxy.

He smiled instead, and sat in silence with his partner.

After a time, when the planet above had slipped halfway into the shadow of its moon and the stone beneath them held no trace of the day’s lingering warmth, Baze tipped his head down to press his cold nose against Chirrut’s ear, making him startle away. “Time to go in.”

Chirrut hopped up without complaint, light as the pinna bird Mother Superior often called him. “We have early service duty,” he agreed.

“Mmh.” Baze took his extended hand to pull himself to his feet with a grunt. “True.”

He didn’t let go Baze’s hand until the door to their room hissed shut behind them, and then it was to lift his fingers unerringly to the clasp of his robe. Baze watched his hands as the weight of the warm robe fell off his shoulders to crumple on the floor. He hummed a quiet breath of amusement, and Chirrut lifted an eyebrow at him. “What are you laughing at?”

“Didn’t you just say we have an early morning?” Baze was already reaching to pull him close, though. As modest as he was about touching Chirrut where anyone else could see, here in their familiar room, bathed in the dim glow of the small kyber crystals embedded in their walls, he couldn’t get enough of his skin.

Chirrut was already sliding his swift fingers below Baze’s undershirt, fighter’s calluses catching on the hairs of his chest. “Don’t blame _me_. You were the one who brought up that day in the desert, chasing the pinna birds. You knew very well what you were doing.”

He lifted his arms to let Chirrut push his shirt up and over his head. “We’re not seventeen anymore. Maybe you expect too much of me,” he answered; but he reached for Chirrut again as soon as his hands were free. They weren’t old yet, either, and this man still stirred him, as he had for the past quarter century and more. As he likely always would.

“All things are possible in the Force,” Chirrut informed him, his face bright, and Baze laughed out loud and pushed him down onto their bed.

The passing of years had been kind to Chirrut: he was just a little less slender now, just a little weathered by time and battles, but he was as lithe and vital as he always had been when he coiled around Baze. Baze, for his part, had grown from a tall, strong, handsome young man into this aging hulk of a warrior, thick-waisted, thick-thighed, strong as an ox and about as shapely. He accepted what was, as his training had always taught him; he took pleasure in the strength of his back and his arms and bent his body willingly to the service of the temple… but there was a small, vain part of him that looked back on his youthful self wistfully. There was an even smaller, shameful part that was thankful Chirrut had lost his eyes while Baze was still handsome, that he would never see him like this.

Aging bodies or no, they still moved together as they always had. Chirrut still touched him with joy, delighting in his sturdy weight, in the solidness around his middle and the breadth of his shoulders and chest, in the thickness of his cock and the coarse curls of hair that framed it. He was still giddily pliant and open at every touch, his legs spreading wide around Baze’s hips, almost as flexible now as he had been thirty years ago. He still spent every second of their coupling murmuring praise that sounded like his ridiculously irreverent prayers, except when Baze stopped his mouth and put it to more practical use.

He wrapped himself around Chirrut’s back when they were done, mouthing soft kisses onto the nape of his neck, smoothing his hands reverently over strong thighs and stomach. Giving thanks and praise in his own, wordless way.

“Baze,” Chirrut said after a while, making a half-hearted attempt to get out from underneath him. “Get off, you enormous lump. I’ll set the water clock for tomorrow.”

Half-dozing, and fully warm for the first time since the morning, Baze grunted into his neck and pulled him closer, shifting a heavy thigh across Chirrut’s legs to keep him from getting up. “In a minute,” he murmured, sliding one hand up his chest as a deterrent. “Stay another minute.”

Chirrut huffed pointedly. “If I don’t set the water clock, we’ll oversleep, and we’ll be late for early service, and Mother Superior will box your ears.” He didn’t move, though, just arched into Baze’s touch to demand more.

“And not yours, I expect.” Baze squeezed his thigh fondly. “Why does she never box yours?”

“I’m her favorite,” Chirrut said proudly. “Since I was _six_. You came to the temple so late that you never had a chance to catch up.” He squirmed and rolled over, as graceless as a man like him could ever be, to wedge himself into Baze’s chest and tangle his fingers into the thick hair there. “You know, I’m everyone’s favorite. You should be more like me.”

Baze snorted. “No one should ever be like you, you impious wretch.” Chirrut grinned up at him, and Baze rolled him over, pinning him with his body to kiss the smile from his lips.

In the end, he fell asleep with his head pillowed on Chirrut’s chest, to the mindless movement of his fingers through his hair. Neither of them set the water clock, and they slept peacefully through the dawn.

***

On the day the temple fell, Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus spent the afternoon serving their punishment for dereliction of duty in the Path of Judgments. Pilgrims didn’t go there so much anymore since the occupation, not with white-armored stormtroopers patrolling its explosion-pocked grounds looking for reasons to detain sojourners, but the most steadfast of the Disciples still walked their meditations there despite curfews and checkpoints, and the path still needed to be maintained. No troopers stopped them. They were no longer young, but still in their physical prime; they wore faded charcoal-colored work robes and carried their lightbows on their backs; they were Guardians of the Whills, and despite the occupation, despite the resentment and division in the city, despite the disappearance of the Jedi Order and the waning faith of the galaxy, that still meant something on this cold, holy moon.

They were picking rocks from the Path under the watchful supervision of Adept Mowha Jain, whose sharp gaze curtailed their outright bickering and limited them to a muttered argument about whose fault it was they were here.

“If you hadn’t forgotten to reset the water clock last night--”

“If _you_ hadn’t distracted me--”

“It’s my fault you have the attention span of a sand-flea?”

“Brothers,” Mowha Jain said in her most steely tone, heading off Chirrut’s doubtless cutting retort, “I hardly need remind you that the Path of Judgments exists for _silent_ contemplation and reflection. And those rocks will not pick themselves.”

Chirrut smiled up at the adept, his milky, sightless eyes unerringly finding her reproachful face as he reached for another sharp rock. “Maybe they could be trained to, Sister,” he suggested mildly, at which Baze snorted.

They picked in silence for a time, moving as gracefully together in this menial chore as they did in everything else. Despite his blindness, Chirrut always knew exactly where Baze would be when he turned to place yet another rock in the basket he carried on his back; likewise, Baze could feel Chirrut at his back as though he exerted gravitational force, like NaJedha around which their cold little moon revolved. _You the planet, I the moon_. Chirrut would like that thought, but Mowha Jain would likely find it impious at best, blasphemous at worst. She was a good woman, the adept; no sense of humor, though. Baze stored it away to tell Chirrut later, when they were alone. 

He didn’t realize for a few moments, caught up in his meditation on the way the Force moved in planetary orbits as in all things, that Chirrut had stopped working. Baze turned to find him standing upright and still with his sightless gaze fixed on the sky overhead. He straightened with a grunt, swinging the basket of rocks down to rest on the path, to scan the sky as well. “What is it?”

Mowha Jain followed their gaze. Clouds were gathering overhead, rolling in fast and dark and heavy. She frowned. “A storm is coming. We had better go in.” The anxiousness in her voice proved she had first come to Jedha as a pilgrim: those who were born on this rock celebrated when stormclouds gathered for a hard soaking rain, the rare glut of water a blessing to natives of this parched desert moon.

Chirrut lifted his hand and tilted his head in the way that meant he was listening hard. Baze stepped up next to him instinctively, covering him while he used those incredible senses of his to piece together whatever he was hearing. “Destroyer,” he said at last. 

Baze blinked at the darkening sky, not understanding for a long moment. The first drops fell, warm against his forehead and cheeks; Mowha pulled her hood up hastily, but Baze kept his face lifted, searching for answers.

Then he heard it, too, the unmistakable hiss of ion engines banking, just a moment before an Imperial-class destroyer dropped out of the sky above the temple and the torrent began.

***

On the day the temple fell, a rainstorm raged over NiJedha, pounding fresh water into hard rock and soil until the whole city ran with it. When they were children, Baze and his sisters had run whooping and shouting through the streets when it rained, catching the precious water in their hands to drink their fill, kicking off shoes to splash and play in the sudden streams that ran down their broad avenues, tingling warm on feet more accustomed to being half-frozen. Pilgrims in their many-colored habits always drew back under roofs and awnings, unsettled by the warm and stinging sharpness that marked a storm here, but moon-born Jedhans danced under the downpour. The native faithful, of every religion and cult that had spread from this moon across the stars generations ago, stretched their hands to the sky and gave thanks to a thousand thousand avatars of the Force of Others.

In this storm there would be no thanksgiving. Baze clutched his lightbow in one hand and Chirrut’s elbow in the other, their boots slapping the wet streets as they ran together toward the strafing lights of blaster fire and the ground-shaking explosions of proton cannons. Toward the temple. Toward their duty. Toward their home.

Chirrut suddenly checked and banked sharply to the left; Baze followed without hesitation as he always did, diving after him into an alcove. His partner pushed him hard up against the stone wall and slapped a hand over Baze’s mouth, milk-blue eyes staring unseeing into his. “Wait,” he mouthed silently. A moment later, a squad of white-armored stormtroopers jogged past through the eerily quiet street.

Baze did wait, every muscle stiff with tension as he made his breathing slow. Chirrut’s hand was warm and slippery against his face, and he focused on that and on the mantra he pulled to the forefront of his mind. _I am a tool of the Force of Others. Passion does not rule me. I submit to the Force of Others. Passion does not rule me. I am a tool of the Force of Others. Passion does not rule me…_

His mind was clearer, as it always was when he slipped into the familiar rhythms of meditation, and when he felt Chirrut fumbling for his lightbow as the last of the squad passed their hiding spot it was his turn to catch Chirrut’s arm and lean in to breathe into his ear, “Not that way. We have to get to the temple.”

Chirrut made an angry gesture in response, but he lowered his lightbow, and once the troopers had passed, the pair of them slid out into the empty street and broke into a run again.

They slipped silently through the smoking ruin of the ancient gates, and Baze put out a hand to keep Chirrut from rushing forward while he surveyed the scene. There were twelve Guardians on the temple steps with lightbows and staves in their hands, a mass of crimson-robed Disciples and tan-clad initiates huddled behind them. There were forty or more stormtroopers with blasters trained on them, led by a commander in shining, ominous black. There were five still bodies lying crumpled in the courtyard: one in charcoal robes, one in red, three in white body armor. The warm rain pounded down, soaking the grounds and the people in this still tableau. And Mother Superior stood alone in the middle of it all, her staff in hand with the kyber crystal glowing in soft defiance at its tip, with the black-armored captain leveling his weapon at her ancient, withered form.

Baze growled deep in his throat, and Chirrut pushed at him. “Tell me,” he demanded.

“Two squads of troopers in the middle of the courtyard,” Baze said shortly into his ear. “Guardians shielding Disciples on the steps. Mother Superior between them. _Chirrut, don’t_ \--”

But his partner was already striding out from the shelter of the wall, tapping at the ground with his staff. “The Force of Others is with me,” he said out loud, neatly sidestepping the corpse of a trooper. “And I am one with the Force.”

Half the soldiers swung around, and Baze’s lightbow was on his shoulder before he consciously thought about it. Chirrut stepped on, slow and deliberate, still chanting. “The Force of Others is with me. And I am one with the Force.”

“He’s blind,” one of the troopers said. They were hesitating, uncertain, looking to their commander. 

Mother Superior, tiny and still as stone, shook her head. “Chirrut Îmwe,” she said, clear over the shifting of armor, the hard patter of rain. “You’re late again.”

“Sorry, ancient one,” Chirrut said, still making his way, step by step, to her side. “It won’t happen again.” His voice was heartbreakingly sad; Baze wanted nothing more than to go to him, but the tension in the courtyard pressed against him, and he stood still against the wall, his finger ready on the firing pin of his weapon.

“No,” Mother Superior croaked. “I do believe it won’t.” She lifted her eyes to the troops. “Go on, Captain. Speak the message of your masters.”

He nodded once, sharply. “By order of the Emperor,” he called out, “on the charge of aiding and abetting an illegal insurgency against the Empire, the organization of the Great Temple of Jedha, also known as the Temple of the Kyber, is hereby declared illegitimate and its property forfeit. You are all ordered to surrender and leave this place immediately.”

The Imperial officer and the Disciple of the Whills faced one another. Mother Superior, ancient and withered, was half his size, but she did not look small now. She shook her head at him. “The kyber will not give the Emperor the power that he seeks,” she said. “You’re a local boy, Dainen Lazo. Yes, I know you, as I knew your father, who would be ashamed to see you raising arms in the temple. You were raised here among the faithful, and you know in your heart that this is not right.”

The captain kept his eyes on her. “I have my orders, Mother,” he said, very low. “We don’t have to shed any more blood in your temple. Tell your people to surrender, and my troops will let them leave in peace.”

Chirrut was very still at her side, but Baze could see his fingers tightening on his staff. He readied himself, too.

“Peace?” Mother Superior laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “What peace can there be in a galaxy ruled by the strong against the weak? What peace can there be in conquest and domination?”

“The peace of order and security,” he said, his voice tight. “The peace of victory over chaos and superstition. This is your final warning, old woman. Surrender, and live.”

Mother Superior considered him for another moment, and then, unbelievably, she smiled her gentle smile. “In all my years, my child, I have never learned to bow. I think I am much too old to learn it tonight.” She gave Chirrut the most infinitesimal tilt of her head. 

“Now,” Baze roared to his fellow Guardians at the same moment that Chirrut flew into motion, and the first plasma bolt from his lightbow hit a turning stormtrooper in the neck joint of his armor, dropping him instantly. He kept firing, smooth and precise, each quarrel finding a target, each hit ending a threat. He drew their fire in order to keep it from Chirrut and their brothers and sisters who joined in the battle now, using the wall as cover as much as he could.

 _This_ was his gift, his purpose as a Guardian. Not for him the flying feet and fists and staff of zama-shiwo, the inward eye of the outward hand. That was Chirrut, striking out with his staff, spinning through the red streaks of blaster fire to take out two and three troopers at once, moving with deadly grace to the rhythm of the rainstorm and his own chant rising above blaster fire and shouts and cries of pain. _I am one with the Force and the Force is with me! I am one with the Force and the Force is with me!_

The Force protected him from harm -- so Chirrut always said. Baze always countered that, in that case, the Force looked an awful lot like Baze Malbus and his lightbow, guarding his partner’s back when he threw himself into battle without a moment’s thought.

The Force and Baze could not protect them all. A Guardian fell to his left. Zozi n’Gar, the newest sister, flat on her back with a great sizzling hole in her chest and her dark eyes blank and open under the pounding rain. She had been fierce and quiet and kind and very, very young. Baze cried out in rage and grief and put a quarrel through the neck of the trooper who had killed her.

Mother Superior stood still, a red-robed rock in the midst of battle. None of the troopers could get close to her, not with Chirrut spinning in a flurry of limbs around her, not with Baze taking down one after another with quick, clean shots from his lightbow and the other surviving Guardians joining the battle, each in his and her own style of death-dealing. The Imperial captain had ducked back, taking refuge behind his troops, his blaster wavering in his hand. The temple was holding its own against the invaders, and Baze felt something like hope blossom in his heart. The Force was with them, protecting its own.

Then the reinforcements jogged through the gates, two more squads of stormtroopers, and more Guardians began to fall. Prynn Parr, tall and willowy and deadly with throwing stars, went down without a sound in a hail of blaster fire. Mo Sarnosian, Baze’s old mentor when he was new to the temple, first to jump into a bar brawl and first to laugh at a joke, the oldest and the toughest of them all in a fistfight, fell screaming with three burning holes in his side. Wat Kobely, prickly and unfriendly and as loyal as a hound, was tossed up like so much rubble by a cannon blast and left a bloody smear behind on the pale stone wall as he slid to the ground.

And the black-clad Imperial captain, Dainen Lazo, born and raised on this cold and kind moon, lifted his blaster again. Baze aimed, fired, Lazo fell -- but his blaster had flared once before his end, and Chirrut turned unerringly to catch Mother Superior as she fell.

Baze couldn’t hear his own roars as he charged, heedless of the crimson streaks of blaster fire shimmering in the air before him, behind him, all around him. He didn’t hear the roar of the grenade, either, but the explosion caught him head on and slammed him backward into the wall with tremendous force. The last thing he saw before the blackness claimed him was the flash of the second explosion that took out the temple wall itself, the rubble tumbling through the air toward him, and then he knew no more.

***

On the day after the temple fell, Baze woke slowly to fiery pain in his face, a heaving soreness through his chest and back, and a world of blackness in front of his eyes. He groaned, unable to move, and a hand dropped onto his shoulder.

“Hush,” said Chirrut somewhere above him. “You’re still alive. It’s a good thing you’re so stubborn, or you wouldn’t be.” He sounded tired. Baze blinked hard, but the darkness was unlifting, and for a moment panic surged in him.

“Chirrut,” he croaked through a raw throat, and had to gasp for breath just for saying that much. “Wh-what happened to my -- I can’t see. I can’t _see_.”

“That is a very insensitive thing to say to _me_ ,” Chirrut answered tartly, but his hands were gentle around Baze’s forehead. He pulled at something, and suddenly the pain burned twice as hot on his face, but at least when he blinked this time he could see Chirrut through a mist of gray. The ugly panic eased. “The bandage is for your burns, but your eyes are fine. The healer says your face will be all right except for the scarring. You’re lucky I didn’t marry you for your looks, you know.” He settled the bandage back onto Baze’s face. “Your throat and lungs are scorched, too. Who ever told you breathing in fire was a good idea? Between that and knocking a wall over on top of yourself, yesterday was not your best day, Baze.”

He always laughed when things were worst. Baze had loved him for it since the beginning, but right now he was too full of pain and rage and grief to acknowledge his humor. He closed his eyes. “Tell me,” he rasped.

Chirrut laid a cool, callused hand on his cheek, just touching him. “Mother Superior is dead,” he said, the grief raw in his voice. “I would have laid down my life to avenge her. I would have. But I felt you fall, and I was not strong enough to do it without you. The Disciples led me out in the confusion from the blasts, pulled you from the rubble, and we ran. Jonan and Sybel Karan carried you. A family of merchants in the Holy Quarter sheltered us when the patrols came through, and found a healer who would care for you in secret. And here we are.”

Baze groped in the darkness for his hand. “Are you hurt?”

“Not a scratch.” Chirrut squeezed his fingers.

They were quiet for a while before Baze said, the words thick and bitter in his mouth, “How many survived?”

Chirrut held his hand tight and didn’t answer.

“How many,” Baze repeated, hoarse and insistent.

“A few,” he said finally. “Not enough.”

They sat in silence for a long time, passing wordless grief between them until Baze’s weariness pulled him down into shadows, and then he slept again.

***

In the weeks after the temple fell, Baze lay on his back with nothing to do but think, and rage, and regret, while his wounds healed. The merchants who had given them shelter brought food and water, risking their lives and safety every time they slipped into the tiny room behind their shop, until Baze’s body was healed enough for them to move, slowly and painfully, into a different tiny room behind a run-down brothel deep in the Old Market. The Empire was still looking for the temple’s scattered survivors in the Holy Quarter; here, at least, fewer people knew them, and fewer people would be endangered by their presence.

He looked for the Force of Others around him, hunted for any vestige of his once-strong faith in hopes that prayer might ease his mind -- but that faith had died with the temple and his brothers and sisters there, leaving him an empty, purposeless shell. The only things remaining to him now were Chirrut, and his boundless fury, and the dangerous kindness of strangers on the cold streets of his moon. He had been certain of the Force, once, but that seemed long ago and strange now. The place it had once been was burnt hollow, and try as he might to find it, the belief that had sustained him since his childhood would not come back.

“There is no Force,” he said aloud once, when Chirrut was on the streets begging for their dinner. The awful emptiness of it struck him mute, the purposelessness of his entire life to this point.

He lay alone now and listened to Chirrut praying long into the cold nights. He might have joined in for the comfort of familiarity if not of belief, but the bitterness rose in him like bile and kept him silent. 

Finally the bandages came off. The burns on his face were ugly and starting to peel, the rasp in his chest still tight and sore when he breathed in the cold air too deeply, but he could move freely at last, and when Chirrut came back from a day of begging with a sack of withered vegetables and a few handfuls of grain for their supper, Baze greeted him on his own two feet.

They ate a meager meal and drank bitter tea together, and then they sat together on the floor of their room, Chirrut leaning into Baze’s side just as they had sat together in meditation for years.

“What now?” Baze asked at last. Even these weeks later, his head still rang with proton cannons and grenades, the dying agony of their fellow Guardians and the Disciples they had once sworn to protect, the rage of helplessness that had been his life ever since the fruitless, all-too-brief battle. His skin itched with the need to _do_ something. 

Chirrut was still, but for his fingers scraping over the stubble on Baze’s cheek. His chest barely rose and fell under Baze’s hand, though his heart beat fast and light. “Now,” he said, “nothing. It’s over.”

Baze growled and sat up, pushing Chirrut’s hand away and ignoring the tight pull in his chest. “Rot that. There are resistance cells in the Old Market. We’ll join up with one of them.” He scrabbled for his lighbow. “Get up. We’ve been sitting around long enough; we’re going right now.”

Chirrut rolled over away from him instead, pulling his robe over him like a blanket. “ _I’m_ going to sleep. You should join me.”

The directionless anger flared in Baze again, finding a target now in the still form of his partner. “Ingrate!” he roared, making the flimsy walls around them shake with the force of his voice. “Traitor! The Empire killed our family, took our home! We are Guardians! This is our _duty_!”

“Yes,” came the muffled response from Chirrut, who still wasn’t moving, “but it’s not our path. We are going another way now, Baze.”

“Did your precious Force tell you that?” he growled. His head pounded, every muscle tight with undirected fury and his lungs burning with the force of his breath. “Did it tell you why the temple is dead, why the kyber is flying away on Imperial cargo ships, why our brothers and sisters are dead? Can you tell _me_ why it failed us when we needed it the most?”

His partner rolled over again, staring at the ceiling above him with blank, milky eyes. “Baze,” he said, “I wish I knew.”

The grief in his voice cooled Baze’s rage, and he sat down heavily next to Chirrut, reaching out for him. “But you still have faith.”

Chirrut nodded, his fingers closing around Baze’s like a lifeline, those familiar calluses rough and dry against his skin. “More than ever before. Isn’t that strange? I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

Baze shook his head, too worn out from his flare of rage to be annoyed by the mantra. That would come later, the daily irritant of Chirrut’s faith like so many tiny grains of sand against his skin, scraping his wounds open again and again. For now, he lowered himself painfully to the floor, leaned in against Chirrut’s shoulder. 

Chirrut touched him softly and then urgently, and they came together on the floor of the tiny hovel they now called home. It was silent and fierce and full of grief, and in the end Baze Malbus cried the last tears he would ever cry.

He wrapped himself up in Chirrut afterward with his eyes stinging and wet, breathing in deep the bitter unwashed smell of him, the greasy reek of smoke and blood and particle discharge that still lingered on the robe they’d spread underneath them. The last traces of the battle that had destroyed Baze Malbus. The beginnings of a life that would build him anew.

***

A month after the temple fell, Chirrut sat in the street with his begging bowl, offering prayers for alms, while Baze waited inside to make a trade of a different kind.

NiJedha was a different city now. Since the occupation began there had been half-hidden resentment and fear in the air, but the people had gone about their business almost as usual; now there was seething anger roiling through the streets as more and more troopers marched through the city. With the temple gone and the remnants of its Disciples and Guardians scattered (dead, in hiding, smuggled off-world to relative safety) the pilgrims were even fewer than before, the poor were poorer without the temple’s alms to sustain them, violence spiked in the streets without the Guardians to keep the peace as they had done for centuries before. A shopkeeper in the New Market was shot and his entire family arrested on suspicion of hiding wanted fugitives; a day later a guerilla fighter tossed a grenade in the middle of a group of Imperial cargo pilots, killing two of them as well as an elderly civilian, which sparked yet more tiny battles and revolts until bloodshed had become unremarkable and blaster fire echoed day and night. Jedha was simmering with the beginnings of outright revolt, and the last of the Guardians were alone in the middle of it.

On this particular afternoon he was hunched over a corner table in the brothel’s grimy, half-empty taproom, nursing a spice beer and keeping his ears open. He’d taken to wearing a second-hand old flightsuit, the only outfit he’d been able to scrabble together from the rag stall in his size. (Whatever pilot had once worn this suit must have found most cockpits a tight squeeze, Baze had reflected the first time he put it on.) His hair was growing out of its formerly neat little bun, rising untamed from his scalp like a desert dog’s ruff; between the hair, the peeling burns marring his face, and the blaster case at his feet, even the hardest men here gave him a wide berth.

The woman who eased herself down next to him, though, was not the least bit cautious of him. She slapped her money down on the table. Old Jedhan knots, not Imperial credits. “Two more of the same,” she called to the bartender.

Baze glanced sideways at the new arrival. She was human, fair-skinned and gray-haired, trim and nondescript in a tan jumpsuit and wearing the patches and attitude of a supply ship crewmember. He waited for the bartender to move away, then tipped his newly-replenished beer to her in thanks.

“The old sun brings no heat,” she said, raising her own mug as though the words were a toast.

“But there is heat in breath and life,” he responded automatically. Lines from the sunset prayer of the Disciples of the Whills, innocuous enough to pass under the radar of Imperial surveillance, obscure enough that few who hadn’t been part of the temple would even recognize its significance: it was the call and response he had been waiting for, the reason he had been waiting in the taproom to begin with. 

She nodded at him, all business. “Do you have it?”

Baze reached down to the case he’d rested on the floor beside him. He hesitated for a long moment. Inside that battered grey box was his disassembled lightbow, the last trace of his life in the temple, proof of his mastery of the seventh duan. In happier times it had taken him months to shape the precious wood into the sleek contours of a bowcaster, to assemble the firing mechanism, to painstakingly inlay the decorative designs that made his weapon unique. He had fired it many times in service of the faith; he had last used it in that final, fruitless battle for the temple. Giving it up now felt like a betrayal of the oaths he had sworn.

But Jedha no longer needed a Guardian with no faith left, to guard a temple which no longer existed. It needed a marksman with a good blaster, which was why he was here.

He pushed the bow’s case over to her under the table, and exhaled. “There,” he said.

The dealer unobtrusively flipped the case open, glancing down to check its contents. She whistled softly under her breath. “Gorgeous. That’s the real thing? Made by a Guardian up at the temple?”

“Yes,” he said shortly. “Now you.”

She flashed him a grin and nudged her own gun case toward him under the table. Baze, in turn, cracked the lid and glanced down. As promised, it contained a solid Blastech M-37 carbine; old-fashioned, no-nonsense, powerful enough to punch its plasma bolts through body armor and vehicles alike. A handful of Imperial credits were nestled carefully into the case’s lining along with enough powerpacks to keep him in business for a good while. He nodded and closed the case.

The dealer knocked back her spice beer and stood, hefting the bowcaster case. “Pleasure doing business,” she told him. “May the Force be with you.”

Baze’s throat closed up rather than respond to the customary wish; he jerked his head in an ungraceful nod. For a long time after she was gone he sat with a half-empty mug of beer in front of him, feeling the weight of the blaster case against his leg while he watched cargo crews and the odd pilgrim meander into the taproom for the evening rush.

Chirrut was just where Baze had left him when he finally went back out to the street, tucked into an alcove with his staff across his knees and his begging bowl before him. There were only a few more tiny coins in the bowl than there had been when he’d left.

He didn’t say anything or even audibly sigh, but Chirrut made a face at him anyway and snatched the bowl away. “Stop looking like that,” he said. “There were children who needed a bite to eat more than we do. Are you done?”

Baze grunted in assent. “I made a few credits on the deal, anyway,” he said. “Let’s find some real food to eat tonight. And maybe even some decent tea.”

Back in their little room, they ate the dumplings Baze had bought for them from a vendor, drank the tea (still bitter; good tea was difficult to find now on Jedha), and then Chirrut sat quietly while Baze lifted his new blaster out of its case. He dismantled it to clean each part, familiarizing himself with the inner workings of the machine. It was similar enough to other blasters, solid and reliable, powerful enough for killing, precise enough for his sharpshooting. Nothing like the coiled, deadly elegance of a lightbow, but it would serve its intended purpose. He put the carbine away feeling more at peace than he had since the loss of his faith. 

That night Chirrut didn’t pray; he came to bed and kissed him demandingly until Baze rolled over to pin him. It was gratifying to feel Chirrut stirring underneath him again, to know that _Baze_ did that to him even now.

He worked Chirrut slow and rough, reading the cues in his face and his never-ending monologue to know when to go ahead, when to draw back, when to kiss him silent again. His own cock was passive between them; in their youth that would have been unimaginable, almost offensive, but Baze had long since grown out of the young man’s obsession with his penis as the center of sexual pleasure. Pleasure came now from his hands on his partner’s strong body, from the sight of his milk-blue eyes half-lidded and his lips dark and wet with kisses, from the taste of Chirrut’s mouth and the praise that spilled from it when he came.

There was no Force for him. There was Jedha, her people suffering under the boot of the Empire, and there was this man, bright and steady as the planet above. The only things in the galaxy that mattered anymore.

He nestled his partner carefully under his arm when he was through, watching the lines in his face relax. “Chirrut,” he said after a while.

“Mm?”

“I want to tell you something. Don’t laugh.”

Chirrut smiled up at him. “You know I can’t promise _that_.”

Baze stroked his hair, feeling it sleek and shining under his fingers. “It’s something I was thinking just before -- before the temple fell.” He leaned in to kiss his forehead softly. “You are like NaJedha to me.”

Chirrut snorted. “Enormous, gaseous, and uninhabitable? _Thank_ you, I love you too.”

“No, you ridiculous lump. I mean…” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re my center, you keep me steady. You the planet, I the moon. I meant to tell you before.”

He felt Chirrut sigh and shift closer, burying his cold nose in Baze’s neck. “Well,” he said after a moment’s reflection, “now that I know you have it in you, if I have to wait another thirty years for you to say something romantic again, I’m going to feel cheated.”

Baze closed his eyes and hid his smile. “You’re insufferable, and I regret saying it already. Go to sleep.”

“Planets never sleep, Baze.”

“Planets don’t _talk_ , either.”

“That is an excellent point.” 

“Thank you.” Baze kissed his forehead. “Good night.”

 

_fin._


End file.
